Science Says: Don't Date Muscular Men

[maynardsong]

According to a study conducted at the University of Westminster, stronger men make awful boyfriends. The study surveyed 327 straight British men, more than a third of whom were single, and discovered that the more muscular the participant, the more likely he was to have sexist beliefs and hostility toward women. Yikes

Comments

[mythrai]

eh all men are sexist to varying degrees so science isn't really telling me anything new there. it's always just been a degree between NeoLiberal covert douchery and the more traditional Aggressive Dude douchery.

i disagree with your premise though, if only because muscular men have never been a female sex fantasy so much as they've been a male power fantasy. See the constant outcry in movies/games/comic books about how Men Are Objectified Too. But it's not for sex - it's for physical power. Women can have sexy, fit bodies so long as they don't cross the ~masculine~ line that heavyweight female weight lifters do, for example.

[mycenaes]

eh all men are sexist to varying degrees so science isn't really telling me anything new there. it's always just been a degree between NeoLiberal covert douchery and the more traditional Aggressive Dude douchery.

Perfectly put.

[mythrai]

okay sure, but the argument is cyclical (and to be fair, so is the one in the 'science' report) - are muscular men attractive because society conditions women to want power, to find power sexy, in order to uphold the status quo?

[mythrai]

care to elaborate? no evo psych sources, please

[mythrai]

evolutionary psychology (women evolved to love stronger men's looks/smell/body hair because it meant they were strong fighters/good breeders/warm in the winter)

[mythrai]

theres a whole mess of reasons but the main one is that i feel the study of evolutionary psych is a reading in of current cultural values into historical and biological 'evidence', creating an echo chamber to continue to sustain social oppressions

[mythrai]

just because something isn't a conscious decision doesn't mean it's driven by biology. we make plenty of tiny, snap decisions daily based on emotional, mental, situational factors too. it's also not out of the realm of possibility that unconscious choices are formed by the society around us.

i'm not saying those choices have any moral weight of good or bad, but writing it off as just hormones is p simplistic

[mycenaes]

it's also not out of the realm of possibility that unconscious choices are formed by the society around us.

I agree with this. Think about people who make quick judgments about others based on race, gender, able-bodiness, etc--those judgments surely aren't based in biology. If they were, then the perception of beauty wouldn't change over time.

[starblydsneetch]

agreed!

[mythrai]

that's how you FEEL but that's not backed by the discourse on discussions of sexism, racism, etc. The Hidden Brain is a good book that examines this, or even googling something to the effect of how we unconsciously make decisions turns up plenty of links about this topic.

the inability to want to examine this critically speaks more to society's "brainwashing" than anything else, tbh